Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?

Gerry Quinn · 24 May 2011, 13:37 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 14:37:38 +0100
Subject: (urth) Wolfe's brilliance or my denseness?
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From: "Ant?nio Pedro Marques" <entonio at gmail.com>

> No dia 23/05/2011, ?s 18:01, "Gerry Quinn" <gerryq at indigo.ie> escreveu:
>
>> Readers who embrace too carelessly the impossible may therefore find 
>> themselves thinking that Wolfe is extraordinally ambiguous, whereas 
>> readers who dismiss too easily the unlikely may find them lacking in 
>> solutions.
>
> +1 (I'm a dense reader myself, so I'm not implying my reading is the best)

Thank you.  Obviusly I make the comment from my own perspective, thinking - 
but don't we all even if modesty makes it hard to say - that I am a 
reasonably good reader of Wolfe, or at least a good assessor of different 
ideas about his books (I am probably not especially creative when it comes 
to inventing new ideas).  And it would be disingenuous of me not to admit 
that I see most of my battles on this newsgroup as being with people who 
lean too much towards embracing impossible theories.

That is logical, though, as people of the kind who dismiss the unlikely 
probably won't show up too often on a list like this.  You will see reviews 
of Wolfe from time to time that exclaim "why do people rave about this guy, 
stuff happens in his books for no reason and nothing is explained!"  I think 
those reviews are from that kind of folks, and they will generally then put 
Wolfe down and find some author more to their liking.  So I suppose it's 
inevitable that the average perspective in a list like this will lean 
towards overly fantastical interpretations.

- Gerry Quinn

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